Learning to Read with Speak
This past weekend we had some family visit, and not surprisingly, playing with all our tech was a favorite activity for all the kids.
I installed the Activity version of TuxPaint, which Sam has played with for several years on my Linux and Mac computers. I had previously installed this via yum, but starting it up on the command line was difficult for Sam, so this is a welcome addition to Mr. Laptop. Sam has become quite proficient with Sugar and has even started using some keyboard shortcuts.
I also noticed the Speak activity and threw that on there. This is a simple application that shows an animated face on screen that speaks whatever text is typed in by the user. After the expected round of "Dad is a butthead" and other kid-hillarious utterances, Sam and his cousin settled into an interesting educational use for the program. They are both just starting to read, and took great delight in entering in "the hard words" to the Speak activity to help them read Transformers comics, several books and even a garden seed catalog. Yet again, another great example of the spontaneous learning fostered by a kid friendly computer.
